When it comes to getting veterans’ services, long waits are often the norm.

Roughly 10 percent of veterans seeking VA medical care wait 30 days or longer for an appointment, according to updated national data the Department of Veterans Affairs released on Thursday. That is more than double the number who were listed in that category in a June 9 data set.

More than 56,000 veterans have been waiting longer than 90 days for a VA medical appointment, and an additional 63,869 never had an appointment after enrolling in the VA health system over the past decade, according the June 9 audit. VA officials say they have since reached out to 70,000 veterans stranded on waiting lists.

The audits revealed the situation is generally better in Massachusetts than in many other states.

Federal investigators have uncovered potential evidence of fraudulent scheduling records at dozens of VA hospitals across the country, with 13 percent of schedulers interviewed in the audit reporting that they had been instructed to enter false scheduling data to make wait times look shorter than they really were.

Auditors flagged 81 sites, including the Brockton division of the VA Boston Healthcare System and the Leeds-based VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System, for further review regarding scheduling and access management, although the report doesn’t indicate fraudulent practices in those facilities.

“I’ve asked the Boston medical center VA if this is a problem for them, and they’ve assured me it’s not,” said Coleman Nee, the Massachusetts secretary of veterans’ services. “I know the VA’s inspector general is looking into it, and if even any of it is remotely true, it’s disgusting.”

In addition to the long waits for medical treatment, the VA also has significant backlogs in its benefits system. The average U.S. veteran filing a benefits claim will have to wait 269 days to get a determination.

Of the benefits claims originating from the VA’s Boston regional office, 6,699 were pending as of May 31. The VA classifies any claim that’s been in the queue for more than 125 days as being in the “backlog,” and more than 55 percent of the claims from the Boston office fall in that category.

Long waits for care

The average wait time for a new-patient appointment in the VA Boston Healthcare System is more than 58 days for a primary care appointment, according to the federal audit of 731 VA facilities. The average wait for the same type of appointment is 16 days at the Bedford VA facility and nearly 68 days in the VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System.

The VA had a goal of getting patients into appointments within 14 days.

The wait times for established patients are much shorter. The June 19 data revealed that it take approximately one day for an established patient to get an appointment in the Boston and Bedford systems, and 11 days to get an appointment in the VA Central Western Massachusetts system.

Page 2 of 3 - Massachusetts has fewer than 600 veterans who have been waiting more than 90 days for an appointment, according to the audit, compared to more than 57,400 nationwide.

U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., recently held a forum at the VA hospital in West Roxbury, where he met with veterans service officers from across the state.

Lynch said the scandalous accusations of fraud at some VA hospitals, particularly the one in Phoenix, have created an image problem across the whole system. Eighteen veterans on fraudulent waiting lists in Phoenix died while awaiting care. Employees in Phoenix and some other VA hospitals have been accused of hiding the veterans on the false lists to make the officially listed wait times appear shorter than they really were.

“One of the veterans agents said their veterans sitting at home don’t see Phoenix or they don’t see Fort Collins, Colo. They see VA and they think West Roxbury. They think Brockton or Jamaica Plain,” Lynch said.

While the preliminary report found that VA facilities in Massachusetts need to increase access and reduce waits, particularly for mental health and dermatological services, Lynch characterized the review as fairly positive overall.

“The VA in their preliminary review has taken best practices from the Massachusetts VA hospitals and said they’re going to recommend them to other areas of the country,” Lynch said.

He specifically referenced the Massachusetts model of having a veterans services officer for every city and town.

Lynch supports a plan that would require the VA to pay for a veteran to get private healthcare if it can’t see them within 14 days.

Interim Secretary of Veterans Affairs Sloan Gibson, who was appointed following Secretary Eric Shinseki’s resignation, said getting veterans off waiting lists is the top priority.

“Not all veterans are getting the timely access to the healthcare that they have earned,” Gibson said in a statement. “Systemic problems in scheduling processes have been exacerbated by leadership failures and ethical lapses. I will use all available authority to swiftly and decisively address issues of willful misconduct or mismanagement.”

Benefits backlog

Inefficiencies in both the benefits system and the healthcare system in the VA have recently come under scrutiny.

On the benefits side the backlog, the number of unprocessed claims that have been in the system for more than 125 days hit an all-time high last year, topping 611,000 nationally. The number is now approximately 287,000.

Lynch views the backlog as primarily a matter of resources. He referenced a 2008 spending bill that Congress passed that gave the VA system its largest ever funding increase. The additional resources, he said, helped the agency modernize its practices.

Nee said a variety of factors have contributed to the benefits backlog.

“It’s kind of a perfect storm of more claims coming into a system that really wasn’t ready for it and hadn’t modernized itself in quite some time,” he said.

The paper filing system, Nee said, was part of the problem. Failing to adequately prepare for the influx of a new generation of veterans, also added to the spike in demand for services and benefits.

“The VA probably didn’t anticipate the number of vets they were going to see from post-9/11 wars,” Nee said.

Another factor contributing to the backlog was a 2011 VA review that linked several ailments, including certain types of cancer, to Agent Orange exposure during the Vietnam War.

“That resulted in a number of Vietnam vets, which are the biggest group of veterans we have here in the commonwealth and nationwide, filing even more claims than they ordinarily would have,” Nee said.

Nee said Massachusetts has been working closely with the VA to encourage veterans to file fully developed claims rather than submitting claims without sufficient documentations.

“As a result of that, we’ve seen veterans get claims now in 90 days, or 60 days,” he said.

Nee said access to benefits has improved in the 24 years since he entered the system as a veteran who had just returned home.

“When I tried to access VA services back when I came back from Operation Desert Storm in 1990, back then you were just told everything takes two-three years,” Nee recalled.

He thinks the issue of the backlog primarily revolves around coordination and organization, not resources.

“I think it’s a very complex system, how they rate these claims,” Nee said. “Maybe taking some of the complexity out of that would be helpful. I know it’s so complex, in fact, that the raters that do the work generally take a couple of years before they really feel comfortable and these people really know the system.”

Gerry Tuoti is the Regional Newsbank Editor for GateHouse Media New England. Email him at gtuoti@wickedlocal.com or call him at 508-967-3137.